I have examined several brain training apps for iOS and Android and make no excuse for covering more apps of this type and you cannot have too many. Mental exercises are good for your mind!

In order to have healthy grey matter inside your head, you need to spend as much time exercising it as you do the rest of your body at the gym. Just as you exercise different body muscles by varying the exercises at the gym, you need to vary the mental exercises you engage in to get the most benefit doe your mind.

This is why brain training apps contain so many different games. You can increase the variety and exercise every part of the mind by using several apps. Remember that you will only improve those functions that you practice. For example, if you practice adding and subtracting numbers, you will not improve your multiplication and division. You have to actually practice multiplication and division. If you practice chess, you become a better chess player and you will not become better at solving crosswords, you actually have to practice crosswords.

It is therefore essential that you perform as wide a range of activities as possible in order to give every part of your mind an equal amount of work. The more you can do, the better your mind will become.

The apps here are all different and they provide different exercises for your mind. That is a good thing because and it means you can give your mind a more thorough and wide ranging workout. I used the apps on an iPhone, but there are Android versions in the Google Play Store.

(See Lumosity vs Fit Brains and Elevate vs Mind Games for more brain training)

Peak - Brain Training

By: Brainbow | Size: 238 MB | iOS: 12.0 or later

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The first thing that strikes you when starting out with Peak is the use of color. Some people may find the frequent switching from one bright colour to another a bit too much, but I liked it. The app looks modern, it is very easy to use, and the information is presented in a clear manner. It has a great look and works well.

You start out by playing some assessment games called Low Pop, Perilous Path and Word Fresh. Low Pop displays numbers on tiles on the screen and you simply tap them in ascending order. There are three numbers to begin with and it couldn’t be easier. However, as the numbers grow larger and negative ones are introduced too, it requires a little more thought. In an effort to rush through as fast as you can you tend to make the odd mistake.

Perilous Path has a grid of tiles and the location of several bombs is revealed. They are hidden and you must then trace the path between two points without running over a bomb. It starts off easy enough, but becomes harder as the grid is made larger and the number of bombs increases.

Word Fresh has a grid of letters and you must trace a word by going up, down, left or right. It is a bit like a word search puzzle. Each time a word is made, the letters disappear and more fill up the grid. More points are awarded for longer words. I found this quite difficult, just like when you stare at a word search puzzle and can’t find that last word.

Other games include Smile On Me where you must tap the smiling face from a collection of faces, Babble Bots where you make as many words from a collection of letters as you can, Pixel Logic where you color in squares in a grid, and more.

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The app provides a planned course and the idea is that you perform a predefined set exercises every day that are designed to improve your abilities. Points are awarded for each game and there are ranks to work through and other things to encourage you to keep going. Your progress is monitored and tracked and compared to others.

To give you an idea of how good or bad you are, your scores are displayed on a Brain Map. You can see your scores and compare yourself to other people in your age group and others in your profession. This is an excellent feature and you can see your map and other people’s maps on the same chart.

Peak is a very nice brain training app with a good and very colorful, design. There are many games, 48 in total, but as is often the case with this type of app, you don’t sit and play them all in one go. The idea is that you play a small number each day. You can set a time to display a reminder and then you work through a set of games. There are 8 daily games, 10 problem solving games, 8 memory games, 10 focus games, 7 mental agility games, 3 emotion games, 2 coordination games and maybe more.

The content is limited for free, but you do get to try some randomly selected games. A subscription is required to access all of the games. After a 7-day free trial it costs US $34.99, UK £25.99 a year.

Brain Yoga Brain Training Game

By: Sara Pierce | Size: 79 MB | iOS: 8.0 or later

This is a very different app and there is much less emphasis on speed than with Peak, where you have to rush to complete tasks, which leads to mistakes. There is nothing wrong with that approach, but Brain Yoga is slower, requires more thought, and is not dependent on reaction speed.

The app contains a set of puzzles and there are 11 in total. Each of the puzzles has a difficulty setting and you initially start off at a fairly easy level. If you find it too easy and complete the puzzle too quickly, you just increase the difficulty and play it again.

I won't describe all the games, but they are all fun and challenging. Unlike other brain trainers, there is no clock or timer. You can sit and think about a puzzle for five minutes or as long as necessary.

In one game you are given a number of shapes and you must make a square by dragging them into position. It is easy when there are just four pieces, but increasing the level increases the number of pieces and it becomes quite hard. A variation of this game has letters on the shapes and you must not only fit them into the box, but ensure they make words, too.

Another game is a bit like Sudoku, but instead of entering numbers into a grid, you drag stones into a grid. On each store is a shape and color, and each row and column must have only one type of shape and one color. It is solved in a similar way to Sodoku and it is quite hard, even on the easy levels.

There is a game in which you see 3D cubes that have a different colour on each side. You must work out which cube would match a piece of paper, if the paper was folded into a cube. Once again it is quite hard.

The games involve shapes, patterns, memory, words, numbers and so on. They require deep thought, not fast reactions, and you must solve a puzzle. Speed is not important and it is a slower game that makes you think more than some other brain training apps.

Unlike some brain training apps, Brain Yoga is cheap. Unlimited access to everything is a one-off fee of US $4.99 UK £4.99. The cost of some brain training apps is a bit off-putting, but this is a no brainer. It is cheap, fun to play, and different to other apps.

One problem I had with the app is with the contrast of text, which made it hard to read. However, I like this app a lot.

Brain School - Brain Training

By: Mastersoft Ltd | Size: 99 MB | iOS: 10.3 or later

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Brain School is free, really free and there is no option to pay. A small add at the bottom of the screen is all I have seen so far and when you are concentrating on the games, it is not noticeable.

Many apps of this type have some sort of training programme and this one uses a school theme. There are four years to the school, five brain training games in each year and five levels to each game. You are rated A+ to E- for each game and you must achieve a minimum rating on one level to unlock the next.

The games are varied and is number based and requires some mental arithmetic, like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. One is a shape-based addition and subtraction and you must add two shapes together and say what the outcome would be. A game is based on weights and you must work out which is the heaviest object from sets of scales. A shape game requires you to make a shape, like a rectangle, from different shaped pieces.

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There are limited games at first and you only progress by passing exams. These are a mixture of the games from that year and again you must achieve a certain level to unlock the next year. Some of the games are easy, but some are hard and I wonder if you got stuck on a level you would be unable to unlock any more games. It could be an irritation, but remember this is a free app, so there is nothing to lose.

Overall, it is a fun brain trainer and one to add to your collection by virtue of being free. It tracks your progress and you can see in achievements and charts how you are doing.

Conclusion

You need variety in brain training and the more apps you have or the more mini games an app provides, the more skills you acquire. Peak is very good and has a large range of games. It is recommended if you are not put off by the cost. It's not very expensive, but neither is it cheap.

If you have already subscribed to a brain training app and don't want to add yet another subscription, Brain Yoga with its one-off $4.99 fee might be to your liking. The games are very different and it's not a collection of 30-second speed tests, more like 5 minutes of hard thinking per game. I like it a lot.

Brain School is free and while it does displays ads, (cropped off the bottom of the screenshots), they don't get in the way and there is no reason not to add this fun app to your brain training collection.